unapologetically inappropriate vancouver blogging since 2001

Menu

sanitized

Josh has been researching his family tree, and told me he found a great deal of information on a Canadian ancestry site. It’s a pay site, but you get a 2-week free trial and if you cancel before then, you won’t get charged. This sounded like an excellent deal to me, so I signed up and started looking around for information on my family.

I started with my dad, and entered his information. The site has a cool feature that allows you to search based on the information you provided, and it quickly let me know that a John Wangzilla with the same birth/death date was in the system; would I like to take a look and see if they were the same? I did indeed want to do this, so clicky clicky off I went.

Strangely, my dad was already in the system. That’s all fine and good – it gives me somewhere to start – but then I started reeling. I did not expect the reeling, or the deep ache that came afterward. I am now aching and reeling and frankly, it’s all giving me a headache – I have an intranet to build; I don’t need all these emotions.

Someone had already researched a family tree, and added my dad (albeit incorrectly; his middle name was spelled wrong). They added his wife, and kids, and grandkids, and their spouses, and their kids, and so on and so forth. Except .. they didn’t add ALL of it, did they?

They left out my mother, and they left out me. I’ve been effectively and once again cut out of the family by people who would rather pretend that we don’t exist, and that hurts. A lot. I wish it didn’t bother me, but it really does – my dad loved me, you assholes. I’m as much a part of his life as you are, and maybe you don’t agree with how he chose to LIVE that life, but it doesn’t give you the right to sanitize his past to erase what you consider a mistake.